Impossible to have a conversation with a being like this, and yet I had to ask. “The singer out there. Is that my mother?”
“Yes and no.” The Medusa’s mouth did not move, and yet the creature spoke. “She was once your mother. Now she is my voice.”
“Your voice?” I repeated, dumbfounded. “And who are you?”
This time the creature did not speak, yet words cascaded into my brain: Queen. Mother. Empress. Other.
Pressina.
Pressina? The name was oddly familiar, but I wasn’t sure why. And then I had it. “You are Melusine’s mother?”
“Yes.” There was a wealth of grief in the syllable—and then anger, sharp as a knife. “You took her from me. You took her, and you punished me. And so I will punish you.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t—”
“You did!” Fury was uppermost now—the same sort of fury I could hear in my mother’s song. “She was only trying to avenge me against my husband. And you Chantresses punished her for it.”
I shook my head. That wasn’t the story I’d heard.
“No,” I said. “You can’t fool me. You punished her. You gave her a serpent nature because she rebelled against her father.”
I ducked as Pressina howled. “A monstrous lie!” Blue-green sparks shot out from her head. “Only a human would tell it, and only a human would believe it. Here we do not punish our daughters for defending us. And looking like a serpent is no hardship for us.”
This last was true enough, I supposed. And I was worried about what she might do to me or to Nat if I angered her again. Shifting farther back into the cave, I said placatingly, “Well, then, what is the truth of it?”
Pressina answered eagerly, as if savoring the chance to tell her side of the story. “The truth? Melusine always had the power to turn into a serpent. It was in her blood, as it is with all my daughters. And her father deserved punishment.” Her angry voice soared higher. “He said he would love me always, but the moment he saw the scales on our girls—so light, just on their forearms—he threw us all out.”
In the story I knew, it was Pressina who had left her husband. But as Pressina had just pointed out, it was a human who had written that story. Who knew what the truth was?
“So when Melusine made her father pay, I rejoiced.” Pressina’s jellyfish center pulsated. “Indeed, I helped her. When it was done, she should have come back to me. But she didn’t. Foolish girl that she was, she repented of what she’d done, and chose to remain in your world as a Chantress and marry a man herself. And when I tried to come after her, she helped the Chantresses devise ways of forestalling me. She created Proven Magic and the cursed stones.
“But then, when her husband turned on her, as I knew he would, she decided to punish him in turn. She created new song-spells filled with fearful and powerful magic, and set them down in a grimoire.”
My breath caught. Could Melusine have created Scargrave’s grimoire, the grimoire that had given rise to the Shadowgrims, the grimoire I had destroyed?
Pressina continued. “And when she unleashed them on her husband, the Chantresses took the grimoire away from her and hid it.”
Yes, it was that grimoire.
“She fought them, and they killed her.” Pressina’s voice was a howl again. “They killed my daughter. And when I tried to avenge her, they walled me in. They ignored every appeal. They wanted to keep me penned up here forever.” Her face was livid green now, her serpent hair tingling with sparks. Her tentacles thrashed, and waves of raw fury and grief emanated from her, so strong, I could smell them.
Worse still, her glowing eyes were leering at me. Was it sympathy she wanted? Contrition? Right now I was willing to say almost anything that might stem her wrath.
“I—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry!” The head doubled in size, and the stench of grief vanished, leaving only fury. “Oh, you’ll be sorry all right, Chantress. Sorry and screaming and wishing you were dead long before I’m done. We have broken through your wall now, and we are taking back our power. And soon we will be stronger than ever, because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You and your mother both—you made the mistakes that let us wreak our vengeance.”
Anguish tore at me. “What was it? What did I do?”
“You don’t know?” Pressina laughed. “How delightful! Your ignorance has been your undoing—and before you die, you will give us even more of what we want. Do you doubt me?” A tentacle shot out in my mother’s direction. “Look at her!”
My mother didn’t turn; I saw only her back. But her singing never stopped.
“That will be your fate too,” Pressina said. “But I am not without mercy.” A tentacle waved toward Nat, just visible and still unconscious in the midst of the horde. “Give me your stone, and you can save him.”
My hand went to my pendant, still hidden in my bodice. The stone was almost a part of me, but I would give it up in an instant if it really would save Nat’s life.
Her anger faded as she watched me, and an odd expression crossed her face. “Just take the stone off and push it out through the lattice,” she crooned. “That’s all you have to do.”
“And you’ll send him back?”
“Yes.”
“Unharmed?”
“If you insist.”
“And you’ll stop the flood?”
“NO.” All her rage came rushing back. “Humans have not been kind to us, and they must pay too. The waters will rise, and we will drown them all. You will drown them.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“Oh, yes, you will. Your mother is a fine singer, but she is wasting away. I need new blood. I need a new voice. And that voice will be you. Take off that stone NOW.”
A trinket, a keepsake—after my stone had cracked, that was all I’d thought it was. But if Pressina wanted it so badly, it must be something more. And since she hadn’t taken it from me by force, I could only guess that the taking was beyond her powers. Even cracked, it seemed the stone offered some kind of protection here.
For the first time since I’d arrived, I pulled the red stone out of my bodice, into full view—and my jaw dropped. The cracks were gone, and there was a glow like flame deep inside it. It was a small spark, nothing like the full fire it once had possessed, but nevertheless it was undeniable. My stone had recovered at least some of its old force.
As I stared at it, mesmerized, Penebrygg’s words came back to me:
Chantresses used to cross the wall to renew their powers. . . . though it was said that they had to be careful never to take their stones off while they were there, or terrible things could befall them.
I closed my hand around the stone. “The stone is mine,” I told Pressina. “I won’t give it to you.”
Again the stench of anger. Her tentacles sizzled and flicked back at Nat. “Then we will kill the other one.”
Kill Nat? I almost handed the stone over then and there. But even as my hand went to its chain, I checked myself. Once the stone was off, whatever protection it offered would be gone. And then how could I trust Pressina to live up to the bargain? What if she killed Nat anyway? At best, it seemed, I could hope that she would send him back to Earth, to be drowned with all humankind.
By my mother.
And by me.
Yet if Pressina could make threats, so could I. “If you kill him or maim him or hurt him in any way, I will never help you.”
Blue lightning flashed from the tips of Pressina’s hair, driving me back into the far reaches of the cave. But she did not strike at Nat.
My threat meant something, then.
“Take off that stone,” Pressina hissed.
More confident now, I said, “No. Not until he is freed.” And not even then.
But it seemed my confidence was misplaced, for Pressina’s face cracked into a needle-sharp smile. “Oh, you will give it to me before then, Chantress. And believe me, you will wish with all your heart you had done it s
ooner.”
Her tentacles flicked out, and she pulled away from me. The other creatures followed her, carrying Nat. They vanished into a dark hole, leaving me alone in my cave, my mother’s endless song dimly thrumming in my ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
FLIGHT
I had the stone, but Pressina had Nat. Where had they taken him? What were they doing to him?
It was unbearable to imagine, but I couldn’t stop myself. From what I’d seen of Pressina, she was capable of almost anything. She might starve him, or torture him, or possess him as she had possessed my mother—or commit all kinds of horrors that hadn’t even occurred to me. And I could put a stop to it, if I just gave her my stone. Or so Pressina had said.
Had I done right to defy her?
Racked with guilt and fear, I could think only of Nat and nothing else. But at last I pulled myself together. All the feelings in the world weren’t going to free Nat, and they weren’t going to save the Earth from drowning either. For that, I would have to start thinking—and doing something.
What if I took off my stone just for a moment, to see if I could hear some trace of Wild Magic? Perhaps I had a chance of defeating Pressina that way.
My hand went to my stone, then dropped back. Even when I’d been in my own world, my Wild Magic hadn’t worked very well against the strange music of Pressina’s realm. And Penebrygg’s warning made me doubly cautious: They had to be careful never to take their stones off while they were there, or terrible things could befall them.
Tucking my stone back into my bodice, I tried to recall the Proven Magic that my godmother had taught me—the only kind of Chantress magic that could be worked while wearing an undamaged stone. But her dismal prediction—that if I indulged in Wild Magic, I would soon forget the techniques of Proven Magic—turned out to be true. Either that or Proven Magic didn’t work in this realm. I failed with even the simplest song-spells.
After that depressing experiment, I turned to exploring every fissure and rift I could find in the cave, in search of a way out. Pressina and her kind could swim in this ether, but I wasn’t able to, and even on tiptoe I couldn’t reach the ceiling. Everything else, however, I went over minutely. At the back of the cave, where it was too dark to see, I groped at the walls with my fingertips, fearing at every moment that something might bite off my hand. Nothing did, but despair swamped me when I was done. Every inch of the walls had proved solid.
My only chance of escape, then, was through the latticework. Although it burned my hands, it left no marks, so I kept probing at it. I tried covering my hands with my damp cloak, but that didn’t work either. I even pulled the stiff center busk out of my stays and rammed it into the lattice. The result? A broken busk—and a lattice that looked utterly untouched.
I paced round and round the cave, trying to think of something else I could do. Without Wild Magic, I not only felt powerless; I was powerless.
Except for my stone. Evidently it still had some value here, some power. The problem was that I didn’t know exactly what it could do.
I stopped at the lattice to peer out the coin-size holes at my mother, just visible to me. How long had she been here? When had she surrendered to Pressina?
When would I?
Never. Never. Never. I marched myself around to the beat of the defiant word, determined to keep moving, if only to prevent myself from yielding to despair.
Minutes spilled into hours, but the weird green light never changed, and neither did my mother’s song. Finally I halted in front of the lattice and looked out again at my mother. It still shook me to see her. For more than half my life, I’d believed she was dead, yet here she was—alive.
Even though I knew it was useless, I couldn’t help myself.
“Mama!” I called.
I shouted her name and sang it, but she never turned around, and her song never faltered.
But at last someone else came.
I saw the glow first, a weird bright light on the walls. The stench came next, and I tensed. Then Pressina herself appeared, translucent and bloated, the snake hair in a frenzy around her enormous head. Her scream shook the ether:
“What have you done with him, Chantress?”
What did she mean? The only him I could think of was Nat. Had he somehow gotten away?
At the back of the cave, I forced my excitement down and instead made myself sound sleepy and stupid. “Done with who? What are you talking about?”
“Where is he?”
“Where is who?” I yawned and added crossly, “You woke me up.”
The enormous head pursed its lips. Evidently Pressina was trying to regain some kind of control. “We’re looking for the one called Nat. He’s not with you?”
So he had gotten free! “No one’s with me,” I said. “Anyway, how would he get through the lattice?”
This appeal to reason seemed to help. She approached the lattice, stopping well short of it, and looked about. Some kind of fireworks went on in the core of her, and the cave was briefly illuminated. She could see for herself that I was the only one there.
Evidently satisfied, she swept away, ululating as she went. Other members of the horde shot by my cave, their strange cries echoing down the cavern. Like a pack of hounds, I thought. The hellhounds of the Wild Hunt.
Would they tear Nat apart when they found him? No, I told myself. Not as long as he was a bargaining chip they could use with me.
I hoped I was right.
Hours passed, and still the unearthly cries came. Exhausted, my nerves stretched to the breaking point, I slumped against the cave walls, fighting to stay awake.
Mustn’t let them find me asleep, I thought.
But finally, against my will, I fell into an uneasy slumber.
I thought the whisper was a dream at first. “Lucy . . .”
Nat, I thought drowsily.
“Lucy, can you hear me?”
I blinked. I was awake. The voice was real—and it was coming from the back of the cave. Incredulous, I surged to my feet. “Nat?”
From somewhere high in the shadows came the reply. “Shhh. Keep quiet, love. No one must know I’m here.”
Love. Was I still dreaming? I edged toward the back of the cave but saw no sign of Nat.
“I’m up above you,” he whispered. “There’s a hole here.”
A hole in the ceiling? It was the one place I hadn’t checked, as it had been too high to reach. Even now, as I moved into the shadows, I couldn’t see where it was. But when Nat spoke again, it sounded as if he were directly over me.
“It’s too small for me to get through, but I think I could pull you up. My left arm’s a bit sore, but it’ll hold.”
“What did they do to you?” I asked.
“Nothing worth worrying about.” Not a real answer, but Nat never liked to make much of his injuries.
“How did you get away?” I asked.
“As soon as I was up and able to walk, a couple of the guards let me go. They hate Pressina—and I gather they’re not the only ones. I could be wrong, but I think we’ve stepped into the middle of a civil war. Mind your head. I’m going to reach down for you now.”
In the dark, I couldn’t see his arms properly, but at last I touched his long, deft fingers, callused and strong.
“Here we go,” he whispered, grabbing my wrists. “Keep your head down.”
A second later I was shooting toward the ceiling. A scrape and a bump, and I was through to my waist, but then my hips caught on the rock. I bit back a yelp. Another tug from Nat, and a wriggle from me, and I popped through, legs and all—into rocky darkness.
“Almost there.” Nat’s hands slid from my wrists to my fingers. He pulled me around the corner, into a larger cavern where flickers of distant green light allowed us to see each other. His jaw was bruised and his sleeve was torn, but he was in one piece, and there was elation and heat in the look he gave me. I swallowed hard. As awful as the situation was, it was good—incredibly good—to be beside him, to f
eel the warmth of him, and to have him look at me that way again.
“Nat?”
He touched a finger to my lips. I felt as if I were melting.
“We have to hurry,” he said softly. “The guards say they’ll lead us to safety, but there’s not much time.”
“Where are they?”
“Close by, but it’s a bit of a maze getting there. I’ve got it clear in my head, though.”
I could believe it. As long as I’d known him, he’d had a gift for navigating labyrinthine spaces. Which was just as well, under the circumstances. Even in the faint light, I could see at least half a dozen dark holes here, all leading to who knew where.
Yet still I hesitated. “These guards—are you sure you trust them?”
“What other choice do we have?”
He was right. We had to try. I let him lead me into one of the dark holes.
A few feet in, he stopped. “I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“The stone—Pressina can track you with it.”
“Track me?”
“Yes. The guards told me. They said you should take it off as soon as you could, so she won’t know where you are.”
I looked up at him. Although most of him was in darkness, his eyes had caught the last glimmer from the edge of the cave. The light revealed a sly satisfaction I’d seen before. Only, it hadn’t been in Nat’s eyes but in Melisande’s. . . .
I bolted.
Cursing, she came after me. “Give me that stone!” Her voice was more like her own now—higher and older and full of venom.
Panting, I plunged into another hole, one that showed a faint shimmer of light. A good sign, or a bad one? I didn’t know, but it gave me enough light to run by. And run I did, as fast as I could. Behind me I heard more cursing and shouting. Was Melisande calling for help? I could only hope she’d been lying about Pressina tracking me with the stone, as she’d lied about everything else.
Keep quiet, love . . .
What an idiot I’d been. But there was no time to think about it now. The hole had become a tunnel, and behind me I could hear the slap of footsteps.
Run.
A few yards later, the tunnel divided. I took the right fork because it was wider.
Chantress Fury Page 18
